


fever dream

by cherryconke



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Amputee Felix, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Growing Old Together, Happy Ending, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:21:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21574414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryconke/pseuds/cherryconke
Summary: Felix: frenzied and fractured, selfish pleas spilling from his lips in a useless attempt at changing his stubborn mind; Sylvain: looking for payback of the cruelest, sweetest kind, a hot flash of righteous anger smeared against the backdrop of war.“I promise.”
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 24
Kudos: 394





	fever dream

Felix dreams of being whole again.

Phantom pain radiates through him at all hours of the day, aching worse than a bruise, stinging harder than the deepest cut. It’s his new companion, this pain, a constant weight he struggles under. Each clumsy swing of his blade guts him, every unbalanced misstep a vivid reminder of the blow that sent him reeling. 

It didn’t hurt when the Emperor cleaved off his arm, but it sure does now.

It’d been quick and clean, blade sharper than her amethyst eyes, cutting through flesh and bone like butter. His own sword had just sunk into the pale flesh of her right-hand man, luminescent peridot eyes flashing and fading as he died. Except — except when he’d pulled back, he’d gone reeling off-kilter, right arm detached as he fell backward, skull kissing stone with a resounding crack. 

It had been Sylvain who rescued him, because: of course it had. 

Sylvain, ripping through men and horses alike from his saddle. Ever the gallant knight, he’d shown up like a vision of summer, burning hotter and brighter than the blood staining his coat. Felix’s hands — _hand, singular_ — grasped at nothing, fingers slipping through air before he was pulled, ragdoll-like, onto the back of Sylvain’s mount. 

His vision blurred violently in the aftermath, head spinning, ears filled with the desperate sounds of Sylvain begging him to _stay awake_ and _just hold on._ His arm was severed clean off below the elbow, useless where it spurts blood, shattered bone flaking off in mica chunks.

The following hours, days, _weeks_ after consisted of drifting in the lazy sea of his subconscious, only coming up for air for fleeting moments between regular doses of medicine. They put him to sleep in the best way, the kind that knocks you out and pulls you under deep. 

In the months after, memories begin to return to him — clips and pieces, shimmering inconsistent and hazy: of Mercedes’ face floating above him, soft and careful as she changes the bandages wrapped around the end of his arm, new and clean and white against his skin; of Annette’s voice, chirping sing-song nonsense over his shoulder as she brushes out his matted hair on the pillow, tiny, deft fingers braiding it back into a loose bun, chattering all the while; of Ingrid, her face pulled into a blurry replica of his mother’s as she fusses over each scratch and bruise, working salve into the cracking cuticles of his remaining hand.

Of Sylvain, of course, Sylvain — slacking on his training and responsibilities to sit with him, most times in silence, rubbing broad palms across his skin. Sylvain, curled around him in the infirmary bed, broad shoulders bracketing his as his lips brush over the puckered Thoron scar stretching across his shoulder. Sylvain, talking to him until the sun comes up: sometimes about their childhood, never about the present, but mostly about their future and all the things they’ll do together once the war ends. 

It’s all hopeful, beautiful hypotheticals, but the scene Sylvain spins is prettier than any painting. Felix finds himself nodding along to his plans of wildflowers and the stars at night, of a warm hearth to come home to and sitting in peach trees. 

It sounds so impossibly nice. He doesn’t think he’s wanted anything more. 

\--

Felix begged him not to go. 

The fight had been futile from the start, but that hadn’t stopped tears from falling, from him stooping so low as to plead. His fingers scrambled into tangled curtains of auburn, desperate and pleading all at once, Sylvain’s hands rested gentle but firm around his waist. 

“Please, Syl, _don’t—_ “

Felix held him all night, tighter than he ever had before: their foreheads mashed bruisingly together; their lips sucking down the same oxygen, rattling around in Felix’s lungs as he fought back the hot prickle of tears; pushing himself against his edges, impossibly close, imprinting every dip and curve of freckled skin into the very architecture of his bones.

“I’ll come back to you.” 

It’s unfair how _sure_ Sylvain had looked when he said this, hazel eyes soft at him, that reassuring smile passing across his lips to make Felix’s heart sink in his chest. A pool of foreboding had crept up in his gut, bitter as the bile in his throat. 

“They need me for the fight. But I’ll be back before you know it.”

Felix: frenzied and fractured, selfish pleas spilling from his lips in a useless attempt at changing his stubborn mind; Sylvain: looking for payback of the cruelest, sweetest kind, a hot flash of righteous anger smeared against the backdrop of war. 

“I promise.”

—

Being right never felt so awful. 

Felix will never forget the empty echo of hooves on stone, crisp and clear in their brightness as they pick their way away from him, crimson and steel and teal disappearing with the rising sun. Or the way the chasm around him had swallowed up his screams, drinking in haunting echoes with greedy hands as he fought soldier after Imperial soldier on the bridge, left handed and clumsily rough before slipping out a back gate, fleeing forever from the monastery.

He’s the last of the Fódlan nobility that remains, the last of Edelgard’s loose ends. The invasion of Imperial troops weeks after they’d set off to Enbarr had told him everything he needs to know. 

They’d lost the war. All his friends were dead.

Edelgard had taken everything from him. His ancestral home, his father, his friends, _oh goddess_ his friends — Mercedes and Ingrid and Annette, Ashe and Dedue, all of the people he’d grown reluctantly fond of over the years, had come to love in his own prickly way. 

All of them, every last one, gone.

Later, during his travels, he heard she’d displayed Dimitri’s severed head on the castle walls at Enbarr until it had rotted clean off the pike. 

She’d torn Felix’s arm clean off his body, destroying his ability to fight and years of practice, in a clean shear of blade through bone, her doomed relic aglow with crimson blood, thick and oily.

But the biggest transgression, the worst sin of all — she’d taken Sylvain. Felix’s heart and lungs, ripped straight from his chest, leaving an empty, aching, hollow thing behind. He should be angry, furious, seething with rage and thirsting for revenge, but this loss, stacked atop all the others he’s had to endure — well, it breaks him.

Maybe in another life he’d be better equipped to deal with the overwhelming swell of unwelcome emotions; could have wrestled with them the same way he had when Glenn died — by throwing himself into training, into perfecting each sequence of steps with perfect poise, into getting better, stronger, faster, until he’s a force to be reckoned with.

But this is the timeline he’s been dealt. With no dominant hand, and lacking in most all other skills — he curses the former student in him for skipping virtually every class that wasn’t about swordplay in favor of training more — he falls into a deep well of listlessness. 

Felix knows in his heart he’d be a boon to the resistance that’s gathering underground, the one he hears whispers and snippets of from mercenary bands and merchants alike as he wanders away from Garreg Mach. But the feeble attempts at training with his left hand leave him frustrated and angry. They end more times than not with hot tears streaming down his cheeks in seething rage. He’s no help to anyone, broken as he is. 

He’s lost everything. 

Felix turns to sleep to dull his senses and shut him away from the waking world. It’s far easier to run from the pain of the past and all the demons that accompany each memory than it is to try to untangle them or heal. It feels impossible, anyways, especially without Sylvain. He’d always been marginally better than confronting feelings than Felix had.

Sleep is sweeter than the harsh reality he’s stuck in. In his dreams, he has everything he’s ever wanted.

The dreams ache too, but differently — as bitter as salt in a wound, sour like the sucker-punch of too-sweet candy crinkling the inside of his cheek.

In his dreams he holds his sword in his right hand, not his left. The motions come easy; his grip is firm. He doesn’t falter or stumble. The war doesn’t exist in this dreamworld, the hazy, soft extension of his subconscious — just the sequence of careful steps, executed with balance and precision as he swings, parries, lunges, yielding at the last moment, never killing. 

He trains for a war that will never come, for battles nonexistent, until his bones ache, sweetly sore when he tumbles between his sheets.

He dreams of Glenn. His infectious smile, his easy laugh, filling the hallways of their childhood home with the sound of bells, bright and earnest in their perfection. Strong-armed and strong-willed, he’s the perfect knight, fair and just and gracious, all the things Felix himself is not. 

Sylvain is there, too, wrapping him up in a shelter of broad shoulders, of amber eyelashes that flutter soft as moth’s wings against his own cheek. Felix dreams of his lips, bruisingly benevolent, soothing where they trail light as a paper fan over his skin. Of their sweat, saccharine where they coalesce together, fingers pushing and pulling into salty skin as they lose themselves in each other.

There’s time, so much of it, here. Minutes and hours blur into meaninglessness, of lazy eons spent sparring and fucking and kissing. Poetic praise falls from Sylvain’s lips until Felix is drowning in it, love rising to flow around him like the sea. He spends eternities wrapped up in Sylvain, warm and content and _home,_ right where he belongs.

It tastes like heartbreak. It tastes like raw regret left to rot between his teeth. When he wakes up, he wonders if his dreams are really just nightmares.

—

Before Felix knows it, he dreams through a whole year. 

House Fraldarius, for all intents and purposes, is dead. The same can be said of all of the noble families — at least, the ones who picked the wrong side. They were treated the same as his friends: slaughtered at the Emperor’s behest. It’s a bloodbath that Felix watches unfold from the sidelines with empty eyes and an impossibly emptier heart. 

He wanders for one year, traveling the length of the former Holy Kingdom. Nobody recognizes him — because there’s nobody left _to_ recognize him. His defining feature now isn’t something that he has, but rather something that he doesn’t; his missing arm draws looks from passersby and Imperial soldiers alike, but — paired with an expression that cuts daggers and a perfected scowl — fortunately does most of the talking for him.

Unconsciously, he seeks warmth. When the searing dry heat of Fódlan’s Throat brings him nothing but the dull throb of memories from a happier time, he crosses over, dipping into the reaches of Almyra.; but it, too, feels too much like the sweltering heat of Enbarr. He tries to ignore the pang of heartache deep in his chest when he thinks of Sylvain spending his last days, hours, moments there. He always did hate the heat.

As the year comes to a close, the pain and anger have faded, if only the tiniest bit. He lost everything, but the anger never seems to be able to rise past the aching loneliness that has settled into the fabric of his bones. 

With nowhere left to go, he retreats back to familiar territory. The cold winter of the north beckons to him, the silence of soft snow pulling at the strings of his heart. 

There’s land up here, way up in the reaches of what was formerly Gautier territory: rolling hills blanketed with frost more often than not, empty roads that wind through pine tree forests, vast and seemingly endless in their infinite repetition. 

His trek north takes him past the old Gautier estate, long-abandoned and forgotten, skulls bleached in the wild tangled thickets around crumbling stone walls. Even here, in the furthest reaches from her capitol, the empresses reign stands supreme. He’d never really spent much time here in his childhood — more often than not, Sylvain’s father chose to travel south to visit the Fraldarius family instead of the other way around.

The vague flicker of an old memory resurfaces after he circles the old stone castle, just as he’s starting to steer his mount further west. An abandoned home, a cottage, really — the same one they used to play make-believe and knights-and-bandits in as kids during the few times Felix’s father had brought him on a journey north.

It had seemed almost magical, otherworldly through their young eyes — nestled into a shallow valley between two rolling hills, hidden out of sight on horseback. Bordered by sprawling pines on one side and the slow, icy lap of waves onto the stony shore on the other, it was somewhere they could escape the taunting jeers of Miklan and the expectations of their fathers and just _be._

It’s a miracle the structure itself hasn’t collapsed in all the years he’s been away, but there it stands, impossibly so: front door torn clean off the hinges, shattered glass sparkling in the thick grass and ivy, which has grown wild to encompass most of the remaining walls and what’s left of the roof. Time, a cruel mistress, paired with the elements of sky and sea and sun has turned it into a broken, battered thing, somehow standing, almost to spite it all.

If anywhere feels right, it’s here.

—

Another year passes. Every day he works to survive, to put his head down and push away stray thoughts and memories of the past; to fill the waking hours with tasks that keep his hands busy and his head clear.

It feels good to throw himself into something completely and wholeheartedly again. Falling asleep at night is easier when he has a goal to work towards, something to throw all of his energy and focus into. The nightmares don’t come as often on the nights he’s asleep before his head hits the pillow. He works himself to the bone, but it feels _good_ — good to create, to rebuild, rather than to destroy. 

The weak winter sun bathes his land in watery light, just as it has every day for the past few weeks. It’s cold, nearing winter, the trees clinging to their sparse leaves, though the biting frost of the north has yet to permeate the ground. It’s his second winter here, and there’s plenty to do to prepare — wood to gather, fish to gut and smoke, traps to check, and seeds to tend to before the inevitable swell of snow blankets the land.

The faint clip of hooves ringing bright against mossy cobblestone interrupts the slow, fuzzy swell of waves lapping against the shore. Everything is still and peaceful in the valley, and today is no exception: the soft salt breeze rustling the pine needles; the quiet nicker of his horse roaming the pasture; a lazy thread of smoke twisting through the air from his chimney, embers burning low in the hearth of his cottage. 

A string of honest curiosity vibrates at a high frequency in his chest, thrumming his heartbeat up a couple of notches as he pauses to wipe his hand on the front of his pants, soil-damp fingernails leaving soft streaks on his warm, fleece-lined leggings. In the solitary year he’s spent here, Felix has yet to receive a visitor. His home is effectively at the end of the last road in the empire, somewhere only the lost of the lost could ever stumble upon. Which, frankly, suits him just fine.

A light breeze washes over the land as Felix’s eyes narrow in on where the ribbon of road curves impossibly small, disappearing around a bend. He twists his hair up high and away from his face with his dexterous left hand, securing the whole mess with a worn leather strap, the same one he’d stolen away from Sylvain’s rooms, mended a hundred times over. 

The rhythm of horse hooves stops, more abruptly than it began. The breeze dies, then picks back up again. Maybe he’d been imagining things. He turns back to his task, holding the bundle of rosemary he’s trimming tighter in the crook of his right arm, when movement catches in the corner of his eye —

And there, standing in the quiet light, more brilliant than any sunflower, he appears.

The sweetest fever dream of them all. 

At first he’s just a smudge of brilliantly russet hair, casual as anything, picking his way down the overgrown path, full of knobby new growth and the gentle sway of purple heather. The bunch of rosemary falls from his arm, scattering to play in the breeze. His feet move sluggishly towards this mirage, this dream, heart wild in his breast, blood rushing through his ears.

It’s been two years. It may as well have been an eternity.

Felix feels a little wild, a little rough at the edges when he’s close enough to pick out individual moles, their constellation forming the same shape he’d traced over and over with his lips years ago. Air throttles through his windpipe at lightspeed, coming in in great big gulps that leave his head spinning. He doesn’t know when he started running but now his legs are pumping to match his pace, and it’s simply not _fast_ enough, he’s waited long enough, damn it, he’s done enough waiting for a million lifetimes, until —

Relief comes to him in the form of Sylvain. 

Sylvain, solid and broad when he crashes into him, nearly knocking him off his feet as he gathers him up in the shelter of his arms. Sylvian, burning brighter than any summer day, hot heat against his own cool touch of winter, broad hands pushing them together. Sylvian, hiccuping sobs where his face slots itself into the side of his neck, perfectly aligned with the shell of his ear, the slope of his shoulder. Sylvain, flooding every single one of his senses, brand new and achingly familiar all at once. 

“Felix.” 

Voice full of wonder and disbelief, calloused hands cupping the curve of his jaw, thumbs deliberately careful where they brush over his frozen cheeks. Sylvain looks older, but Felix supposes he must too. Stubble speckles Sylvain’s face, rough where it rubs against his own. His hair is a little longer, a little coarser, but his single dimple is still painfully beautiful in its sameness, imposed in all its art against his cheek.

He’s here. He’s _alive._

“Sylvain,” breathed hopelessly, a whisper and a plea and a promise all at once. 

“You’re alive —” 

Felix is cradled, cracking in Sylvain’s grasp, furious he only has one hand to use to touch, to reach out and feel the tangible weight of Sylvain between his fingers. _Alive after all this time, alive after all this time,_ sings like a choir through his head, thrumming, electric, and brilliantly brassy, crescendoing over him like a crashing wave.

“You’re _here_ —” 

Heat where Sylvain’s breath washes against his neck, fingers plucking at the seams of his shirt, faded linen cloth crinkling in broad palms. They pull back, a synchronized dance Felix is remembering all the steps to on the spot, Sylvain’s arms hooking around his waist, his own hand mapping the planes and devastating smatters of freckles across Sylvain’s face.

“I thought you were _dead_ —” 

Sylvain’s cutting him off before he can finish, and the sound of his voice, anguished against Felix’s mouth, steals the breath from his lips, knocks the air from his lungs:

“I thought _you_ were —”

And then they’re kissing, and it feels like the breath of fresh air Felix has been waiting to take for two years. Sylvain tastes so dizzyingly familiar it almost brings him to his knees. The press of his tongue against the seam of his lips is sweeter than he’s ever dreamed of.

 _“_ Don’t be mad,” he begs, at the same time Sylvain’s whisper into his mouth of, _“I’m so sorry, love,”_ is swallowed up in the tenderness of their lips sealing against each other’s.

Sylvain’s breath joins his, twin exhales mellowing out to soft puffs of barely-there air. Oh, how Felix has missed the weight of him: the steady thrum of his heart beneath his ear, the press of his lips against the crown of his forehead as he leans in, cradling his face between his hands once more. Plush lips move down his face, pressing insistent kisses to his brows and the bridge of his nose and the corner of his mouth, coming away salty with tears. 

“I’ll always keep our promise,” breathed quiet, absolute. The way Sylvain says it is almost smug, almost bragging, like he’s victorious in the proof standing before him: Felix and his skinned knees and chapped lips, dirt smeared across his cheeks, reminiscent of when they were young. 

It’s the vow binding them together since the blossom of their youth. It’s the oath they’ve never been able to keep. That’s never really stopped them from trying. 

“Me too, ’Vain—“

The way they fall together feels like coming home. 

Hunger crawls under his skin, gripping at his bones, lighting little fires beneath the press of Sylvain’s fingertips. They move together slowly, like overlapping waves crashing against the same shore, sweetly saccharine in their familiarity. It’s rough and gentle, too much but not enough, so intense it’s nearly painful. 

Moments blur together, hazy and hot and too good to be true until he’s pressed up against the furs by the fireplace, spread open and pinned by the sweetly desperate way Sylvain looks down at him.

When they pull off each other’s clothes, clumsy and fast, Felix finally sees the toll the last battle has taken on Sylvain — a scar, burnt into the skin of his back, wrapping all the way from the crown of his shoulder to his last rib. Seared in half, almost literally, by an errant spell of dark magic, undoubtedly sent from the Emperor’s loving hands.

His fingertips trace over it, that puckered line of raised skin and the jagged path it marks down his back. His lips map every winding curve, pressing soft butterfly kisses into that freckled scar, never deviating. Felix follows the easy slope of his spine all the way down, hand resting lightly on Sylvain’s hip when he looks up, and he can see from Sylvain’s half-turned face that he absolutely, positively needs this too.

“Sweetheart, please,” Sylvain murmurs, all flushed cheeks and bitten lips, the sweetest vision Felix will ever see. Sylvain is — oh god, he’s the color of the sun before it strikes a deal with the moon each night, he’s the smell of rain in summer, he’s lazy afternoons and stolen time and the air in Felix’s lungs. He is love incarnate, holding him down, grounding him to earth. 

Firelight flickers over both of them, each bathed in the warm glow of the other’s embrace, freckled skin pressed to ivory. It’s bittersweet, the relief Felix feels in how Sylvain opens him up, snatching him from the depths of despair he’s been dredging through all this time, carrying him up and towards the light, towards the searing sun. Felix feels like he’s drowning in the way Sylvain slides down his thighs, licking over him, etching and burning love into every inch of his skin. 

“Yes — ’Vain, need you.” 

His hand comes up to caress the stubble on Sylvain’s jaw, fingers threading through coarse locks. He throws his other arm up, hooking his elbow around Sylvain’s neck to scrabble for purchase and pull himself up against him, impossibly close. 

It’s utterly unselfish, how Sylvain just gives him everything: brushing thumbs across his cheeks, over his lips, into the hollow of his clavicle; pressing open-mouthed kisses against his scars, down the length of his arm and over the skin stretched taut below his elbow, infused with so much love it feels like he might burst; touching all the parts of him Felix has craved — the pale insides of his thighs, the scars that twist across his stomach and down his hip —pulling him open and apart until he’s gasping for air, drowning in Sylvain.

“I’m right here, love, I’ve got you.” 

Sylvain’s reassurances rip sob after sob from Felix’s chest, messy and overwhelming until broad hands slow, movements softened to a quiet grind, hip to hip, cheek to cheek. 

They rock together, reveling in the sweet friction until soft whines pitch themselves from his lips and Sylvain’s readjusting the grip on his hips to lift him up and slide into him, overwhelmingly full, finally home. 

“I’m right here, Fe.” 

His nose, pushing into the crease of his cheek. His hand, reaching up to stroke lovingly over the abrupt end below his elbow where it’s hooked around his neck — the missing piece of him he’d lost in war, the whole reason Sylvain had been gone so long, looking for revenge. His body, sheltering him in grace, tucking him into his side, soft as snow.

He wonders briefly if Sylvain, too, is experiencing that falling pit in his stomach, the uneasy turn of shadows in the corners of his vision, the mere thought of losing him again enough to threaten to pull him under.

“Don’t leave,” Felix sobs out, all pitiful tears, desperation clawing its way up his throat, burning like whiskey, choking like blood. 

“Never.”

Sylvain seems determined to show him rather than tell him, pushing in slow and sweet, their bodies joining together in all the right ways — one knee hooked over his shoulder, the other curled round the slender curve of his waist, heel digging into the dimples in his back. Sylvain burns against him, deliciously slow, the drag of friction pulling the most pitiful noises from the back of Felix’s throat.

It’s been two years, but Sylvain’s hands remember him. 

They remember how to move in circles, brilliant and fast like their youth, to drag him closer and closer to the imminent edge. They remember how to cradle him gently, how to dig into the meat of his thighs, how to coax moan after liquid moan from his lips, spilling high and feverish into the space between them. They remember all the specific ways Felix falls apart, piece by piece, every secret and insecurity spilled out. They remember how to soothe each fear and shake loose each desire from the cage of his chest. 

_“Syl—”_

He’s sobbing now, coming apart at the seams, lips moving of their own accord, stuttering and stumbling over the shattered pieces of his brain. His thighs tremble as Sylvain works himself into Felix’s tight heat, steady as the rising sun, crooning things like _darling_ and _sweetheart_ down at him, names he never thought he’d hear again. 

“I _missed you,”_ Felix manages to pant out, breath coming in hot, sharp inhales against the click of his teeth. 

Sylvain’s fingertips press everywhere into him: the divots of his hips, the curve of his jaw, the cracks of his heart. They move up his flank, grasping at where he’s hard and dripping. The look he gives him could eclipse even the brightest star. 

“I know, Fe, baby, I’m so sorry—“ 

_“O—oh,”_

The wave crests, overwhelmingly warm and intense, tearing Felix from the ledge he’s hanging onto. The sound of rushing water pounds through his ears as he rides it out, writhing beneath Sylvain’s quaking thighs, strung out on the look Sylvain gives him, the sweet words whispered tenderly into his bones. 

A new supernova blooms into existence in the deep pool of his gut as Sylvain crumbles above him, little gasps coming quick as he gets there, too. His stomach tenses, lashes fluttering, scraping softly against the meat of Felix’s cheek as he falls forward around him, dropping his forehead to press against Felix’s own, just like they’d done the last night they spent together—

_“I love you, Fe.”_

It’s nearly enough to send Felix spiraling into oblivion, fucked out against the fur of his rug, crying out, caught up in beatific rapture. He loses track of how long they lie there, panting against one another, reveling in the sticky, sweaty, gorgeous mess that is their love. 

His eyes blink open blearily as soft warmth envelopes his naked body, pillowing against his skin as strong arms deposit him into the tangled mess of his sheets. Sleep continues to try and drag him under as Sylvain runs over the backs of his thighs with a warm, wet cloth, massaging over his bruises and scrapes, wiping away the dirt and sin from his skin. It nearly takes hold of him as careful fingers begin to brush through his hair, tangled bun falling out into a long, silky mess across the unmade bed. It isn’t until Sylvain’s wrapping himself around him that he awakens a bit more, part of his mind still unwilling to accept that Sylvain’shere, he’s real, he’s alive and healthy and whole. 

It’s quiet except for the low crackle of embers in the hearth, the whistle of wind over the lip of the chimney, the muted roar of waves hitting the shore. When Felix speaks, his voice is rough and scratchy from disuse, hot breath washing over the slope of Sylvain’s neck. 

“I thought you died. _Everyone_ died.”

Sylvain shakes his head against their shared pillow, hazel eyes mournfully melancholic, the sharp edge of bitter regret flashing momentarily to reflect back at him. Felix watches, desperate to drink in every minute of him, even if it turns out to all be a cruel joke his mind has decided to play on him. 

“Not everyone. Not Annie or Mercie. They were smart, they ran when the battle turned. They’re the ones who pulled me back after—” he gestures to his back, to the little glimpse of the scar Felix can see on his shoulder, “—this happened. Claude and Hilda made it out too.”

Felix’s brain stutters, stops — it starts again, a twisted thread of hope rising to peek into existence. His friends — some of them, at least — are _alive,_ have been alive all this time, and he never knew. 

“No one came back to the monastery,” Felix mumbles, feeling the breath catch in his throat as he recalls the days and weeks he spent trailing through their old home, a shadowy ghost of his former self. How dawn had bled into sunset and faded back to dawn again. How he couldn’t be bothered to count down the endless numbered days until the army finally reached Enbarr.

Sylvain’s hand soothes against his head, pushing errant locks away from his face. The gesture is so tender it nearly brings him to tears right then and there. 

“We did, but the Imperial troops got there first. We all…” and here he pauses, words stuck on the tip of his tongue, unsure. “...Well, everyone thought you died.”

“But you didn’t,” Felix guesses slowly, skeptically. Affectionate hope blooms into existence within his chest. Sylvain shrugs half-heartedly against the pillows, hazel eyes flickering down to meet his. He leans down, pressing a chaste kiss into the bony bend of Felix’s right elbow, right over his scar. 

“If you were going to break our promise, I guess I thought you’d find a way to let me know.”

The smile that spreads across Sylvain’s lips, low and lazy — Felix would do anything to see it, day after day, year after year, each waking hour. He swallows, the hard knot in his stomach jumping up to his throat. What did he do to deserve this man — foolish and headstrong and loyal, beautifully stubborn in all of his love? 

“They all went to Almyra. Claude was able to hide everyone safely there.” A deep breath, a pregnant pause. “I’ve been looking for you ever since.”

The way Sylvain says it, so simple and matter-of-fact, like it’s the most logical thing in the world, breaks what remains of Felix’s heart into a thousand tiny shards. Twisted threads of emotion rise up in his chest — frustration that he didn’t know of the living, regret for not staying longer at the monastery, anger and disbelief that not once did he stumble upon any of them in his own travels. 

A vision of Sylvain, endlessly wandering the plains of the continent to find him, flashes hot into the backs of his eyelids. Felix can’t help but shudder against him, feeling sick, but then Sylvain’s hands are wrapping him up, bringing him closer, a thick thigh slung over his waist, pressing into him. 

“I had nothing left to lose, Fe.” Words like a flight of birds in his chest, plucking at his heartstrings. “I knew you were out there. I had to find you.” His voice breaking, radiant colors and soundwaves, that tragic, well-rehearsed oath: “I love you.”

The pull of sleep is soft tonight, all it’s hard, anxiety-riddled edges smoothed out by the weight of Sylvain against him, holding him near. Still, some part of Felix half-believes he’ll wake up in the morning and Sylvain will be gone, simultaneously the best and worst hallucination he could ever think into existence. 

—

Sylvain doesn’t leave. Not that night, not the day after, and not any of the days that follow. 

Time passes slowly, then all at once, slipping through the cracks and creases of their lives. For the first time, they finally have the space to wrap themselves up in one another, to begin building their future together. His waking hours are finally, _finally_ filled with all the things he’s always dreamed about:

The peach tree they plant together, young and sprightly, outside their kitchen window. Every summer, yellow flesh melts mellow tartness onto their tongues. It tastes like warm weather and long nights spent up late, entwined together on a blanket beneath the hazy glow of fireflies and constellations. It tastes like the curve of Sylvain’s smile pressed into his neck, teeth flashing brighter than lightning into him. 

The vaguely heart-shaped stone, perfectly worn, impossibly smooth, the one that Sylvain found in the riverbed. It lies on the hill he visits to think of Glenn, of his mother and his father, of Dimitri and Ingrid and the dead that occasionally still come to haunt his dreams. The breeze up there is balmy, their home a blurred smudge beneath him. Sylvain brings flowers every week, twine tying up weeping trails of wildflowers woven together with love.

Sylvain, combing through his hair every night before bed, braiding it back into increasingly intricate patterns. Felix suspects he must learn from the girls in the neighboring village when he goes to pick up their simple list of necessities — flour, tea, cinnamon. _I should cut it, it’s way too long,_ he mentions once before Sylvain’s giving him puppy-dog eyes, taking it between his fingers, tickling the edge of his shoulder. _I like it long,_ Sylvain replies back in the curve of his ear, teeth nipping, eyes twinkling. And so it had stayed. 

Peppers, carefully cultivated by Sylvain, each crop hotter than the last. The eager grin on his face, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes and scrunches up his nose as he feeds them to Felix one by one, carefully studying the reactions as they map themselves across his face. The excitement sparkling in his eyes when he stumbles back from the nearby market with saddlebags full of jars stuffed with spices and vinegar and scribbled instructions on how to pickle them, all so Felix can eat them year-round.

The hearth inside their cottage, snug mismatched chairs pulled up before it. Warm stone against their cheeks and feet, the center of their gravitational orbit, pulled back night after night. It’s where they fuck, hot and languid and soft and hard, wrapping themselves up in one another until Felix can’t remember anything but the shelter of Sylvain’s arms, cradling him through rolling climax after climax. It’s where eternities of _I love you’s_ spill from their lips as they press, shaking, into each other, the song of his name the only sound on Sylvain’s tongue.

Sylvain’s smile, wide as a ringing bell, indelible and ephemeral as the passing of time. The one that lights the fire in his bones he hasn’t known without him flashes at him from horseback, or across the shimmering swath of river that cuts through their stretch of land, or from the depths of their bed, buried in the messy impression of blankets and sheets. 

The gleaming onyx and moonstone on his third finger, the one that catches him off guard during little times throughout the day — the way it flashes in the sunlight when he boils water for tea, the gentle, familiar snag of it as he fiddles with his hair. The same ring Sylvain kisses every night before they crawl into bed together. When Felix had asked why, his response had been characteristically sappy: _“Because I love you.”_

Wooden figurines moving across a checkered board, reflecting in the low firelight. Sylvain loves these games of strategy and tactics they play before bed, delighting with childlike glee when Felix manages to eke out a win. Felix indulges him, hiding self-satisfied smirks behind a covered palm, because, well, _why not?_

The ebb and flow of seasons — snow melting and rising over fields of wild mountain thyme, the meek appearance of the sun as she braves her face come springtime. Their bodies, wrapped up in one another in winter, lying in the shaded grass of summer, one of Sylvain’s hands turning the crisp pages of whatever book he’s absorbed in at the moment, the other threading through Felix’s messy braid.

Sylvain, mending his clothes that he tatters in the knees and elbow, stumbling over needle and thread as rain patters down on their doorstep. Those soft suede patches against his skin as he works in the fields and woods outside their house caress his skin, almost as soft as Sylvain’s own fingers, feeling like love where they brush against him. 

Love is the lines and creases that wrinkle themselves into Sylvain’s face — the corners of his eyes, the spread of his smile, both still boyishly heartbreaking even after all this time. Love is the way his single crooked dimple deepens with each passing year, etching itself like a symbol of delight into freckled, sunburnt skin. Love is the salt-and-pepper of their hair where it tangles together on their pillowcase, his own still long and straight, Sylvain’s still stubbornly disheveled. Love is the rough stubble Sylvain grows out every winter, scratchy where it brushes against Felix’s own cheek.

They spend a lifetime like this, passing afternoons together. Until—

A day just like any other, in the middle of a warm summer, windows open to the sweet scent of honey and blooming bougainvillea. Sylvain wakes him softly, pressing kisses to his forehead, his movements perfected by the sheer familiarity of years spent together.

“We’ve lived a good life, haven’t we, Fe?”

Even after all these years, the simple domesticity of the nickname spilling from Sylvain’s lips gives his heart a little flutter in his chest. Fingers wrinkled by time weave through Felix’s hair, a steady pace that matches the beat of his heart. He rolls over, easy as anything. 

“Yeah, Syl. Yeah, we have.”

Felix turns his face towards his light and all his beauty.

**Author's Note:**

> tysm to ning and levii for being the most gracious and wonderful betas, the rest of the sylvix server for being the collective other half of my brain, and sufjan stevens for writing the album (age of adz) that fueled most of this <3


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